World Wide Web in the Middle of 2014

It’s not amazing to see that technologies develop with time in fact they should to make better. Status Reports are the only was to measure the success and the failures that camp up with those development so after sailing for 6 months and reaching in the middle of 2014 it’s time to have a detailed look at the status of World Wide Web..

The last statistics I published was way back in 2012, World Wide Web At the End of 2012, which went quiet good. I did miss the 2013 due to lack of time so here is a small report on web statics in Middle of 2014.

Web Page Size

The average web page size is on the very edge to cross 2MB by end of this year. Using simple mathematical methods 44% increase of size is predicted by web performance today for this year.

With 1775 KB its just few more KB’s to go lets cheer 🙂

Flash is still reducing its contributions to the page size but the speed of decent has slightly increased, as compared to the first half of 2013. It clearly shows the depletion of flash from the web. Share of Flash to the average page size is :

• 91KB in Jan 2013 to 90KB in June 2013
• 79KB in Jan 2014 to 76KB in May 2014

Images still continues to provide the highest contribution among the other elements and will continue to do so for coming years as well. Unless new compression methods are introduced.

These figures are extracted from HTTP Archives.

Screen Resolution

The trend of the widening and starching the screen kind of slowed down the past year but the manufactures were coming up with more pixes with same screen size, Increasing the amount of pixels present in the square inch of a display makes the contents look sharp and clear.

With a ton of devices emerging every day in different form factors it’s literally impossible to get analytic of devices or is of no use as optimization for device is not valid any more. So screen resolutions have to be the next target to optimize.

Stat counter global stats for the last 6 months ( Dec 2013 – May 2014) indicates max traffic in Unknow resolution, and the numbers seems to be increasing as well. Stat counter indicated unknown as those display size does not belonged to standard resolutions set in the system, the players in this are the portable deceives of higher PPI which means resolution exceeding those of standard monitors in small screens.

Standing in 2nd place 1366x768 is the standard screen resolution for Laptop, Tablets and small Monitors which doesn’t really need much detailed look.

Browsers

Moving on the Key Players of the web the Vendors, web browsers being the playground where every every game is being played, it sure is an important factor not to mention the fact that games played depends on the conditions of the playground.

Google Chrome tops the table with usage share of 38% +, working on the speedy WebKit engine to render the markups & allocating each tabs with its own unique process, it has been doing an excellent job with performance & speed for last 6 Years. Chrome has always been growing from its inception in 2008, It still has grown for about 3% – 4% in 6 months.

Standing in second spot is the Most famous and Hated web browser of all times ( at least by developer & designersn) Microsoft Internet Explorer. IE did make a better come back in IE 9+ versions but the users with IE6, IE7 and IE8 still managed to create the extra pain. After the start of collapse in mid of last decade the trend still continues, dropping 2 – 3 %.

Mozilla Firefox Stood at Number 3 on the table, an amazing browser from the non profit Mozilla that puts the user in front still is the Securest web browser. Firefox has managed to stand in a steady position in browser share throughout the time. This browser has been the primary choice for any one concerned with security and privacy and still stands the same.

Firefox did take a big change in its Look with the new version Firefox 29 : Most Customizable Firefox Ever with an Elegant New Design also code named Australis. It is expecting to catch hold of a little more market share by the end of this year, Mozilla also announced this month that Firefox is implementing DRM (Digital Rights Management) one of the most difficult choice Mozilla could have ever made, Which indeed was a bad move but it left no choice.

Moving down the line Apple Safari and Opera struggles to keep themselves alive in the market with less than 8%.

Note : The following review was made based on the report from Stat counter Global stats which is made base on the reports received to stat counter, the actual share value may change.

The following is the stats from W3Counter for the month of April 2014, it reports Mozilla Firefox as the second leading share holder in the market.

HTML AND CSS

Moving on to the technological part of the web, browser support has grown. All browser vendors have made significant improvements to increase support for web technologies.

Test scores of browser support for HTML5 run by HTML5TEST rated out of 555 points

• Google Chrome : 507
• Opera : 496
• Mozilla Firefox : 467
• Apple Safari : 397
• Microsoft Internet Explorer : 376

It’s happy to see browsers are supporting more properties which brings more possibilities for developers & designers. Flash still exists in the web with decrease in its presence.

The web is getting bigger. In terms of size, speed, requests, content and more, will continue to do so. Increased average Global network speed give a relief for Developers to design image rich website, there’s never been a better time to create and design for the web.

To all developers who have been taking pain on optimizing website for IE6, you can stop it down or may be slow it down.